None of the above: Why Crain's cannot endorse a candidate for mayor

SLIM PICKINGS Malliotakis lacks experience and ideas, while de Blasio is so obsessed with income inequality that he fails to identify with many constituencies in New York City, including its business community.

Let's dispense with any drama: We cannot endorse Bill de Blasio for re-election. Nor can we back his main opponent, Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis. The incumbent is undeserving, the challenger unprepared.

The mayor's refusal to meet with our editorial board either this year or in 2013 conveys disrespect if not disdain for the business community. It's a missed opportunity as well because the mayor would benefit from hearing employers' concerns and could make a case that some of his policies benefit them. Perhaps the Democratic incumbent fears that doing so would undermine his effort to be seen as the pre-eminent champion of all things progressive. As if one cannot be pro-business at the same time.

Malliotakis, for her part, has done the city (and her career) a service by running when no other credible Republican would. Unfortunately she is not ready for the job. Her career in office consists of seven years in the powerless Assembly minority. Given her minimal management experience, she ought to have made her campaign one of big ideas. Yet she has proposed not a single one. Instead she has mostly criticized de Blasio, and even there she has fallen short. She expresses reservations about his business mandates and spending but does not make a strong case against them.

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The major issues elicit no great insights from Malliotakis. Her solution for homelessness is more supportive housing, which is appropriate for addicts or the mentally ill but not for the families filling most shelter beds. She would combat the drug scourge by jailing dealers longer and seizing more narcotics—a naive and failed approach straight out of the 1980s. She is "open" to congestion pricing to ease traffic and fund mass transit, but, lamely, will not commit to it.

Malliotakis is certainly more likable than de Blasio, who is often sanctimonious, arrogant, defensive, condescending and hypocritical. For a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city presiding over record-low crime and a healthy economy, it is quite a feat to have mediocre approval ratings. Blame his incessant puffery (everything is "historic" and "transcendent"), narrow focus on inequality, haughty dismissal of criticism, taking the business community for granted and almost never admitting a mistake. He asked landlords to cut their carbon emissions but defiantly continued taking SUV motorcades from Gracie Mansion to Park Slope for workouts—decrying "cheap symbolism" rather than leading by example.

The incumbent does not want and shall not receive our endorsement, but his main opponent is unprepared

But likability does not disqualify de Blasio any more than it qualifies Malliotakis. So let's look at the mayor's record. He is strongest on housing because he favors high-density, mixed-income projects, which keep rents down by adding supply and don't concentrate poverty. His prekindergarten and afterschool expansions were fairly smooth, and graduation rates have continued to rise, though high-poverty schools remain troubled. His Vision Zero initiative has curbed traffic fatalities. He negotiated reasonable union contracts, though it remains to be seen if promised savings will be realized.

On the downside, the mayor's rigid ideology constrains his vision for the city. Having campaigned against closing failing hospitals, de Blasio has been bailing out a public health system drowning in red ink rather than restructuring it. He stubbornly opposes congestion pricing and wrecked his relationship with Gov. Andrew Cuomo by demanding pre-K be funded by a millionaires' tax rather than the grant Cuomo offered. He created a second powerful enemy in Albany by leading a fruitless effort to oust Senate Republicans, and now cannot get the city's agenda, such as design-build authority, approved by the state. He failed to add homeless shelters and thus has spent a fortune on hotel rooms. He rightly opposed stop-and-frisk but wrongly claimed credit for ending it (a lawsuit largely did that before he took office). His 10-year timeline for closing the odious Rikers Island jail complex is timid. On ethics, he promised transparency yet delivered secrecy and also reincarnated pay-to-play, as donor Jona Rechnitz laid out in stark testimony during a corruption trial last week.

De Blasio has benefited greatly from surging tax revenues and low crime, which his policies did not cause (or prevent, it should be noted). He has not had to close yawning budget gaps or cut programs to fund his pet projects. He has increased head count by 10%, inflating the city's massive obligation to future retirees when he could have reduced it. He is preoccupied with wealth distribution rather than economic development. Though he supported the engineering campus on Roosevelt Island conceived by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we must ask: Where is de Blasio's Cornell Tech? The same day the city bid for Amazon's new headquarters, he accused the e-commerce company of destroying communities. Either he does not recognize the mixed message or he does not care.

Although neither Malliotakis nor de Blasio merit our endorsement, we can offer them some advice. The challenger needs to do more homework and articulate new ideas. The incumbent needs a dose of humility, which would allow him to pursue rapprochement with the prickly governor and to appreciate the perspectives of all New Yorkers.

De Blasio won in 2013 on a "tale of two cities" platform. Given the fiscal threats coming from Washington and capriciousness of Albany, New York deserves a mayor who will unify rather than divide us. — THE EDITORS